Nullarbor Wind
If a eastern electricity grid is connected, the question becomes: what other low emission energy sources besides nuclear, geothermal and solar could be fed into it? The answer: wind and wave energy. But from where?
As the national wind resource map below indicates, strong wind conditions (in the dark blue) exist along most of Australia's southern coast, with weaker by still impressive resources located inland. Many of these areas are not densely populated, and thus could be used for high volume production of wind power. As for wave energy, some of the world's most powerful wave energy lies off the western South Australian coast.
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| Winds are strongest, and populations are smallest along the Nullarbor Plain |
Some of the world's most powerful wave energy resources lie in the Great |
| Source: "2007 Annual Report," Carnegie Corp. |
In the area of wind, big farms are already being built in remote areas such as on the west coast of Tasmania and on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. Big new ones are planned for inland areas such as Broken Hill. If strong resources and sparse populations are needed, areas such as the Nullarbor Plain (which have few others uses apart from being national parks) could become an additional national energy powerhouse. In the Nullarbor, there is a roughly 100-kilometer stretch around Eucla, Western Australia that isn't enclosed in national park. A huge wind farm with turbines placed clustered together both along the coast and stretching inland and connected to Olympic Dam by high-capacity power lines could provide a huge amount of power. What's more, stringing power lines through the area would encourage economic development of mining, agriculture and additonal energy projects in the region like solar and wave energy. Wind could come first.
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The area west of Eucla offers coastal sea frontage outside national parks |
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| High winds from the Great Australian Bight could be delivered to Olympic Dam |
A rough rule of thumb is that wind turbines should be placed roughly five times their diameter apart across the wind, and 10 times their diameter in the direction of prevailing winds. Given this, using a 100-kilometer long coastal frontage near Eucla 20 kilometers deep could yield a massive 2,000MW of power, and could be expanded. This would help bring new economies of scale to the Australian wind industry, driving down costs immensely in an industry which to date has been installing only smaller wind farms. For instance, in South Australia, the most aggressive of the states so far in encouraging wind developments, only a few farms are over 100MW.
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| Utilising the open spaces of the Nullarbor Plain would enable a huge increase in wind capacity in South Australia, already the nation's win capital |
| "2007 Annual Planning Report," Electricity Supply Industry Planning Council |
California has been no stranger to large wind farms, with one - the Altamont Pass, at 562MW and the other, Tehachapi Ranges, at 710MW. And these are old wind farms. Newer technologies have come along to make wind farming much more efficient. What's more, the Germans are building a 400MW wind farm 100 kilometers offshore in the North Sea. The same could occur in the Great Australian Bight since the same company that laid Basslink (ABB) is laying the undersea cable for the Borkum-2 project in the North Sea.
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| Large wind farms have been installed for years in California |
| "California Wind Resources Staff White Paper," California Energy Commission, 2005 |
Yes, the Nullarbor is remote. Yes, stringing power lines to get the energy to market will be expensive. But the Overland Telegraph in the late 1800s and the Snowy Scheme after World War II were similarly considered expensive when they were built. Both in hindsight were good deals. What's more, plans elsewhere in the world to build long power lines to connect promising new sources of clean energy to national and regional grids are becoming more commonplace.
For instance, in addition to DESERTEC's proposals to build power lines to bring North African solar power to Europe, the Southwest Power Pool of Texas is designing a integrated AC/DC transmission system for west Texas that could carry up to 10GW of power from the windswept western area of the state to its eastern cities such as Houston. North American energy infrastructure company TransCanada, Inc. is proposing to build a 3,666-kilometer power line to carry wind energy from the windy northern US plains states of Montana and Wyoming to Las Vegas and Southern California.
Even in Australia, a drive to scale in clean energy production and transmission is underway. Macquarie Bank is moving ahead to bankroll a $2 billion, 1,000MW wind farm near Broken Hill. In the UK, politicians speak seriously about wind's potential to power ALL the UK's electricity needs.
Coastal wind farm development in the Nullarbor region could provide a springboard to moving offshore into the Great Australian Bight with even more wind turbines, possibly operating in conjunction with wave energy machines. This would provide massive power completely away from the Australian mainland and populated areas. The template here could be the proposed 4,000MW Borkum-2 wind project to be located 100km offshore of Germany in the North Sea with power brought to land by high capacity direct current power lines.
Coupled with the harvesting of wave energy from the Great Australian Bight, large amounts of power could be generated from this remote region with little impact on the natural values of the area.
Two companies in Australia, Carnegie Corp. and Oceanlinx have highly promising ideas for harnessing wave energy. These remain highly speculative, but offer huge potential solutions for Australia's energy needs. Both bear watching, as do all technologies aimed at harnessing what may be one of the Earth's largest and most predictable energy sources: tides and waves. For its part, Oceanlinx is already active overseas.